Related papers: Crawling and turning in a minimal reaction-diffusi…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
Branched actin networks at the leading edge of a crawling cell evolve via protein-regulated processes such as polymerization, depolymerization, capping, branching, and severing. A formulation of these processes is presented and analyzed to…
We demonstrate a method for controlling the outcome of an ultracold chemical few-body reaction by redirecting a tunable fraction of reaction flux from one selected product channel to another one. In the reaction, three ultracold atoms…
Motivated by observations of the dynamics of {\it Myxococcus xanthus}, we present a self-interacting random walk model that describes the competition between chemokinesis and chemotaxis. Cells are constrained to move in one dimension, but…
We discuss a theoretical model for bidirectional cargo transport in biological cells, which is driven by teams of molecular motors and subject to thermal fluctuations. The model describes explicitly the directed motion of the molecular…
Filopodia are actin-rich structures, present on the surface of practically every known eukaryotic cell. These structures play a pivotal role in specific cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions by allowing cells to explore their environment,…
The persistent motion of bacteria produces clusters with a stationary cluster size distribution (CSD). Here we develop a minimal model for bacteria in a narrow channel to assess the relative importance of motility diversity (i.e.…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of the…
The polymerization of actin via branching at a cell membrane containing nucleation-promoting factors is simulated using a stochastic-growth methodology. The polymerized-actin distribution displays three types of behavior: a) traveling…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
Dynamics maintaining diversity of cell types in a multi-cellular system are studied in relationship with the plasticity of cellular states. First, we introduce a new theoretical framework, reaction-diffusion system on `chemical species…
We propose a non-local model for contact guidance and steric hindrance depending on a single external cue, namely the extracellular matrix, that affects in a twofold way the polarization and speed of motion of the cells. We start from a…
Activity and renewability are distinctive features of living matter, and constitute a new class of materials that we term renewable active matter. A striking example is the cell cytoskeleton, where myosin filaments bind to the actin…
Understanding the motion of particles with ligand-receptors is important for biomedical applications and material design. Yet, even among a single design, the prototypical DNA-coated colloids, seemingly similar micrometric particles hop or…
Growth drives cellular dynamics in dense aggregates including bacterial colonies, developing tissues, and tumors. We investigate the underlying physical principles emerging from the interplay of growth, steric repulsion, and motility in a…
Motility is characteristic of life, but a common basis for movement has remained to be identified. Diverse systems in motion shift between two states depending on interactions that turnover at the rate of an applied cycle of force. Although…
The motion of cells in tissues is an ubiquitous phenomenon. In particular, in monolayered cell colonies in vitro, pronounced collective behavior with swirl-like motion has been observed deep within a cell colony, while at the same time, the…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
Cell migration is a fundamental process for life and is highly dependent on the dynamical and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton. Intensive physical and biochemical crosstalk between actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…